Writing Courses


The Craft of Writing
K30.1018 4CR R 6:20-9:00 Morling
First class meets on Thursday, January 27.

In this multi-genre writing class we will look at poems, stories, plays, essays and other non-fiction as meeting places, as spheres that hold within them other spheres. We will consider our writing as bridges or thresholds, as hinges even as aiding in opening doors to new worlds, new ways of looking. How is our own imagination compatible with the present moment and the multiplicity of simultaneous events? What is our process of selection? What do we choose to write about --- do the details involve a dish towel or a ruby necklace? How does our individual perception inform the philosophical perspective of our writing? How can our writing be as natural as possible, the form and the content be inevitable to the point of near invisibility? Topics will include the aesthetics of narrative, a sense of place, surrealism, the prose poem, notebooks and philosophical fragments. We will read essays, stories, plays, poetry, non-fiction and philosophical writings from Europe, China, Japan and the Americas to inspire our writing.

Revision: From the Inside Out
K30.1020 4 CR R 6:20-9:00 Madeleine Beckman

Hemingway rewrote a manuscript thirty-nine times. Picasso made hundreds of sketches for Guernica. Revision is the process of discovery during which the work’s structure, its very meaning, changes and grows stronger. Revision involves a commitment to uncovering what one is wishing to communicate. Students will work a piece of writing from idea through first and subsequent drafts. Exercises and readings will assist students to go deeper, to open the conduit between mind and paper, to close the gap between intention and result. Some questions to be asked: When are you revising or just skimming the surface? When have you abandoned previously held concepts, making way for new ideas? Readings to include: Borges on Writing; Revision: A Creative Approach to Writing; essays by Roland Barthes, John Berger, and Dore Ashton. Guest writers and artists will be invited.

Writing About Performance
K30.1034 4 CR MW 2:00-3:15 Julie Malnig

This writing seminar will train students to become critical viewers of performance and translate their “looking” into descriptive and analytical prose. Students will be introduced to a variety of critical strategies and approaches—from formalist to ethnographic to various forms of sociological and cultural criticism—to develop their interpretive skills. These analyses will help students discover how various performance mediums are constituted, how they “work”, and how they create meaning for viewers. Assignments will include interviews, artists’ profiles, performance documentations, cultural reviews, and critical and/or theoretical analyses. Occasional group excursions to performances will be arranged, as well as class speakers. Some of the authors, essayists, and artists whose works we may read include: Susan Sontag; Michael Kirby; Edwin Denby; Deborah Jowitt; Joan Acocella; Joyce Carol Oates; Anna Deavere Smith; Spalding Gray; and Henry Louis Gates, jr.

Writing Your Life: The Memoir
K30.1310 4 CR MW 3:30-4:45 June Foley

This course combines an exploration of the literary genre of memoir with a workshop in writing about your own life. While reading and analyzing a variety of twentieth-century American memoirs—beginning with Esmeralda Santiago’s When I Was Puerto Rican—students will use these works as models for evoking sense memories, recreating scenes, extrapolating plots from lives, placing lives in history, and discovering one’s own voice. Topics include the relationship between memoir, autobiography, and fiction; the impact of gender, class, and race on writing; and both theoretical and practical questions about the craft of writing. Readings may include Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird, Esmeralda Santiago’s When I Was Puerto Rican, James McBride’s The Color of Water, Jill Kerr Conway’s The Road from Coorain, David Sedaris’s Naked, and William Zinsser’s Inventing the Truth.

The Letter as Literature
K30.1326 4 CR TR 3:30-4:45 Victoria Blythe

The letter as a genre of literature is situated in a middle space between private and public discourse. This writing seminar will inhabit the “space of the letter” to experiment with the letter-format as a unique modality of self-inscription. We will examine the “space of the letter” as an especially productive location for writing, and the literary letter as a vehicle with the potential to transport our writing from personal communication to literary work. We will theorize the letter by reading other people’s mail, such as Sylvia Plath’s “Letters Home”, Kafka’s “Letter to My Father”, and Rilke’s “Letter to a Young Poet”, letters written as literary works, and letters never intended to be read. We will investigate the rhetoric, psychology and economy of the letter, a trajectory that will take us through the dead letter office (Derrida’s “Post Card”) and into the realm of blackmail (Poe’s “Purloined Letter”). As a community of writers we will “send and receive” letters in various literary formats: the open letter, the love letter, the fragment; and take our place on the cutting edge with the electronic letter as it shifts the paradigm of this familiar, but strange, literary genre.

Writing New York City
K30.1340 4 CR R 2:00-4:45 Nettie Jones

New York City is one of the contemporary world’s great dramatic characters. It is an “ark,” housing representatives of every nation and ethnicity. International and cosmopolitan, the city is a site of contestations in terms of class, identity, power, and desire. In this course, we survey fictional and nonfictional representations of the city and use the city as inspiration for our own writing. Seminar participants are expected to produce unique narrative prose from a variety of perspectives about the city. The focus is on the process of selecting appropriate materials both from the literature and from exploration of the city, from Harlem to Lower Manhattan. Possible texts include Samuel Delany’s Times Square Red and Times Square Blue and The Black New Yorkers: The Schomburg Illustrated Chronology.

Writing for Children
K30.1345 4 CR W 9:30-12:15 Emily Jenkins

Writing picture books for children involves special concerns: age-appropriate content, vocabulary, length, didacticism, the interplay of text and illustration. In this course, students will write manuscripts for young children in several drafts. Assignments focus on developing convincing characters in limited space; making use of repetition and rhythm; and creating a plot in 32 pages. We’ll work on investing our manuscripts with emotion—and on thinking in terms of images as well as words. There is a heavy writing load in this course. Students will workshop their stories in a group setting. We’ll also spend significant time looking at twentieth-century picture books (Dr. Seuss, Margaret Wise Brown, Maurice Sendak), and students will be expected to bring in examples that interest them, making use of the public library.

Writing with Integrity: Exploring the Boundaries of Nonfiction and Fiction
K30.1496 4CR R 3:30-6:10 Melanie Hulse

New journalism and creative nonfiction injected fiction techniques—dialogue, thoughts, descriptive scene making—into nonfiction. While this has greatly enlivened reading, it has also greatly complicated the writer’s and publisher’s responsibilities to the reader. This course explores the ethical and stylistic issues that arise when these previously distinct disciplines conjoin. The class will read exemplary writing from the different disciplines and explore the issues they provoke. Discussion will center on questions such as: What do the terms “nonfiction,” “creative nonfiction,” and “fiction” mean? When does nonfiction become so “creative” that it crosses over into fiction? Can fiction be libelous—and actionable? Students will maintain individual reading journals and write one paper summarizing their understanding of the issues discussed. In addition, student teams will research, present, and guide class discussion of particular case studies. Case studies may include works by Janet Malcolm, Truman Capote, Washington Irving, Joan Acoccella , and George Harrison.

Advanced Writing Comedy
K30.1511 4 CR R 2:00-4:45 Barry Goldsmith

Building upon the ability to write basic humor, jokes, monologues, short comedic stories, and sketches, students in this workshop will write individual sitcom scripts and comedy screenplays. We will focus on learning the basics of plot construction, style, and applying humor to dialogue and characterization. We will also study great comedic plays and movies and adapt them to our writing needs.

The Short Story: A Workshop on Revising
K30.1536 4CR M 6:20-9:00 Carol Zoref

This workshop is dedicated to the oft-repeated observation that all writing is re-writing. Each writer will focus their efforts on only one or two short stories, rather than starting many new stories and abandoning them in favor of yet another new beginning. Students will take each of their stories through a number of drafts and revise them in response to (though not necessarily in accord with) questions and comments raised by other members of the workshop. The objective is to learn ways of staying with such challenges as maintaining the story’s voice, determining the order of experience, and arriving at an ending that satisfies the design of the story as well as the intentions of the writer. Workshop members share their stories in class throughout the semester and comment in detail on one another’s work. They also meet with a different student each week outside of class to discuss their work-in-progress. The class will look at selected master stories by such authors as James Baldwin, A.S. Byatt, Raymond Carver, Andre Dubus, Lorrie Moore, Alice Munro, Flannery O’Connor, and Eudora Welty. Participants should have some experience writing short stories.

Writing Short Fiction
K30.1545 4 CR M 3:30-6:10 Steven Smith

Fiction has gone through an amazing metamorphosis in the last century, from the non-fiction novel to experimental forms that defy placement in any categories. This course is a celebration of short fiction. From the writings of David Foster Wallace, Jean Rhys, Franz Kafka, Lillian Hellman, Ray Bradbury and Flannery O’Connery, the class will try to define and investigate what makes short fiction a viable art form. The class will be an experimental journey into the shorter narrative forms of fiction—the short story, the novella, and metafiction. Artistic visions will be evaluated in the ever-changing landscape of shorter fiction. The class will attempt to understand the evolution of basic narrative modes and how those relate to the student’s own process. The course will workshop experimental student works and showcase past and present forms that both foster and enhance the student’s process.

Fiction Writing
K30.1550 4 CR W 6:20-9:00 Meera Nair

This course provides students interested in writing fiction an opportunity to explore (and practice) various forms of fiction—short story, novella, and novel—in a workshop environment. The main objective of the course is to help students develop their individual styles and voices and to make them aware of the various techniques available to them. Emphasis is on characterization, structure, and dramatization. Every aspect of the craft of writing fiction is examined: point of view, narrative voice, plot, tension, time, sequence, crisis, resolution, dialogue, symbolism, etc. (Students are encouraged to become part of a community of writers where they will work with their peers in a safe, honest and considerate environment). Students will present their own fiction, respond to the writings of others, and pose questions about literature, editing, and publishing. The workshop group and instructor provide a supportive audience that listens and responds to the work of each member.

Fiction Writing
K30.1550/02 4 CR M 3:30-6:10 Sophie Powell

A workshop designed for students serious about writing fiction, this course will push you fearlessly to explore the mazes of your imagination whilst helping you to fix your ideas into narratives of originality, power and style. Focusing on thorough examination and critiquing of your work, as well as, though to a lesser extent, a very varied range of other writers included in your "course packet", you will become versed in all the main tools and tricks within the writing craft and you will learn how to develop and strengthen your voice. Experimentation is encouraged and the publishing world will also be addressed. We will also attend a public reading together.

Advanced Fiction Writing
K30.1555 4 CR T 6:20-9:00 Stephen Rinehart

prerequisite: K30.1550 or V41.0815 or permission of the instructor.

This semester will focus on craft as opposed to theory. We’ll concentrate on how to write well, and more importantly, how to tell the difference between what belongs in a story and what doesn’t. We will assume everyone at the table is a working writer—you’ll have plenty of work to do—and the dynamic will be similar to that of medical students examining a living patient. We’ll mostly discuss your work, but also will include some directed reading. Grading is a combination of participation and the quality of the submitted work.

The Art and Craft of Poetry
K30.1560 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Emily Fragos

In this workshop poets will focus on the foundations and intricate dynamics of poetry as a writer’s process. A weekly reading of a poem by each poet in the circle will serve as point of departure for discussions of the relationships of craft and expression. The emphasis is on inhabiting the quality of language; some time is spent at defining clarity, aesthetics, elegance, and eloquence. The course also covers a brief review of some of poetry’s history, including metric and syllabic measures of writing.

Advanced Poetry Writing
K30.1564 4 CR W 3:30-6:10 Scott Hightower

prerequisite: K30.1560 or V41.0830 or permission of the instructor.

A workshop designed for serious poets, this class will teach students how to take their writing to another level both intellectually and artistically; depth of theme, imagination, and craft will be discussed. Emphasis will be placed on developing and strengthening one’s personal style and voice. Through work-shopping, students will further refine their critical eye as poet and reader. The class will include exercises, readings, and guest poets; submission of work will be discussed and encouraged.

Literacy in Action
K45.1460 4 CR M 6:20-9:00 Paul Jurmo

This course combines volunteer work in New York City adult literacy and English as a second language programs with an academic introduction to the philosophy, history, and current issues of basic education. Students will work as volunteer teachers of reading and writing at such institutions as the University Settlement, Union Settlement, and Fortune Society. In class they will read about and discuss such key issues as which “basic skills” U.S. adults now need, which adults lack these skills and why, the implications for our economy, families, communities, and democracy, the instructional approaches developed for adults, and the steps that might be taken to build support for high-quality, adult, basic-skills programs. Throughout the course, students will relate such issues to their own on-site experiences in class discussion and role-playing, and create a portfolio of writing that includes on-site observations, lesson plans, reflections, and a final analytical paper. Readings may include Making Meaning, Making Change (Auerbach), Bringing Literacy to Life (Spruck Wrigley and Guth), and Whole Language for Adults (Cheatham, et al).